The new publication 'Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen: Monograph as Project' is a comprehensive study of Arocha and Schraenen’s individual and collaborative practices since the 1990s

Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen: Monograph as Project
​Edited and authored by Barbara Vanderlinden
​Book design by Irma Boom
​Published by Mercatorfonds, Brussels
​Publication date: December 2025
​Contributors: Mónica Amor, Philippe Pirotte, Marc Donnadieu, Helen Molesworth and Hans Ulrich Obrist

Mercatorfonds announces the forthcoming publication of Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen: Monograph as Project, a landmark 664-page volume edited and authored by curator and art historian Barbara Vanderlinden, with book design by internationally acclaimed designer Irma Boom.

Expansive in both scope and ambition, this richly illustrated volume reconfigures the monograph as a critical genre. Traditionally focused on a single artist’s biography and oeuvre, this publication expands that model through a critical exploration of authorship, collaboration, and collective practice.

With over 700 images and 66 case studies, the book traces the development of two distinct yet interrelated artistic practices from the early 1990s to the present—Arocha’s and Schraenen’s—alongside their collaborative production, foregrounding the interplay between individuality and partnership, recurrence and variation, form and disruption.

Two Distinct Trajectories, One Ongoing Dialogue

Carla Arocha (b. 1961, Caracas) emerged from Chicago’s vibrant art scene of the 1990s, where she forged a practice rooted in abstraction, material transformation, and perceptual instability. Stéphane Schraenen (b. 1971, Antwerp) emerged from Antwerp’s post-avant-garde art scene, where his early involvement with art, fashion, graphic design, and music informed a practice grounded in conceptual systems and the poetics of framing. Since 2006, their collaboration has produced sculptures, installations, and architectural interventions that activate reflection, spatial dislocation, and iterative variation. Their mirrored surfaces, chromatic shifts, and modular structures not only reframe perception but also destabilize the viewer’s position, demanding a critical negotiation of vision and space.

Rather than merging into a unified authorship, Arocha and Schraenen maintain the differences of their distinct genealogies. Their practices engage in a sustained dialogue, one that demonstrates how individual and joint trajectories can refract and multiply meanings. This is a collaboration grounded in the principle that 1+1=3: proximity generates new, irreducible forms of knowledge and experience.

Essays, Dialogues, and Critical Perspectives

The publication is anchored by four major essays. Barbara Vanderlinden situates the artists’ work within Gillian Rose’s concept of the “broken middle,” framing their practice as a fractured aesthetic that refuses resolution. Mónica Amor rereads Arocha’s early production and the collaboration with Schraenen through Venezuelan modernism and transmodernity, challenging hierarchical notions of center and periphery. Philippe Pirotte examines how material strategies of residue, contamination, and tactile imperfection unsettle modernist visual categories. Marc Donnadieu interprets the collaboration as a rhizomatic structure—recursive, anti-hierarchical, and generative of unexpected connections.

Two interviews—by Helen Molesworth and Hans Ulrich Obrist—add further dimensions to the dialogue. Obrist’s concluding conversation, rather than offering closure, deliberately reopens the inquiry, allowing the book to remain in motion, echoing the artists’ own practice of iterative openness.

A Design as Method

The design by renowned Dutch designer Irma Boom plays a central role, functioning as a critical intervention rather than a neutral frame. With her use of dynamic headers, unconventional captions, and layered layouts, Boom introduces a parallel voice that disrupts linear reading. Her “funky captions,” as she calls them, oscillate between commentary and disruption, guiding and disorienting the reader in equal measure. The result is a book that is not only a scholarly reference but also a tactile and spatial encounter—an object that embodies the very principles it seeks to explore.

More Than Documentation

Monograph as Project is not merely a documentation of Arocha and Schraenen’s oeuvre. It proposes a model for rethinking how art history can be written, challenging the biographical fixity of the traditional monograph and foregrounding instead the life-of-the-work: the persistence of ideas, strategies, and forms across shifting contexts. In doing so, the book becomes both a study of Arocha and Schraenen’s practice and a historiographical tool for reimagining authorship and collaboration in contemporary art.

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About Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen

Carla Arocha (b. 1961, Caracas, Venezuela) and Stéphane Schraenen (b. 1971, Antwerp, Belgium) have been collaborating as an artist duo for two decades, following active individual careers. Arocha and Schraenen have gained international recognition for their sculptures, drawings, paintings, photography, and installations—particularly their signature large scale modular mirror curtains. Arocha and Schraenen challenge perceptions of space, reflection, and reality itself. Their work critically examines the illusions and complexities of contemporary visual culture.

Since 2006, their collaborative practice has been featured in major international exhibitions, including at: FRAC Auvergne, France (2006); The Wallace Collection, UK (2011); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, USA (2013); CC Mechelen, Belgium (2014); Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium (2016); Fondazione Prada, Italy (2018); XIV Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador (2018); Museum of Fine Arts Split, Croatia (2019); Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Belgium (2024) and the Busan Biennale, Republic of Korea (2024).

Work by Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen is held in the collections of MoMA, New York; Chicago Art Institute; Chicago Contemporary Art Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, USA; Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos CAB, Burgos, Spain; FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France and Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium. Their works are permanently installed in the Chicago Art Transit Center, USA; in Belgium at Hof Ter Leenen, Nevele; Tekbroek Nature Park, Puurs-Sint-Amands; and the Campus Coppens, Brasschaat.

About Barbara Vanderlinden

Barbara Vanderlinden (born Belgium) is an art historian and curator of contemporary art. She has shaped the international exhibition landscape through key curatorial projects. Since 1993, she has curated numerous exhibitions, including Laboratorium (Fotomuseum Antwerp, 1999) and Indiscipline (Brussels 2000, European Capital of Culture), as well as biennials such as Manifesta 2, the 2004 Taipei Biennial, and Generation Z (moma ps1). She played a foundational role in Brussels’s contemporary art scene, founding Roomade and initiating the Brussels Biennale, and has held teaching and leadership roles at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Gwangju Biennale, San Francisco Art Institute, and the Appel Foundation and Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. She has authored and co-authored numerous artist monographs, and her book The Manifesta Decade (mit Press, 2006) offers critical analysis of post-1989 exhibition practices and is widely regarded as a standard reference in the field.

Selection of artworks by Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen - download here

Red Hot 1996 Plate Arocha 87 BewerktFloop 7 2022 Plate Arocha Schraenen 119What I Don't See At Night (Living Room) 2024 Plate Stéphane Schraenen 082 Bewerkt

Mechelen Marauder 2014 Plate 20240318 CASS KMSKA 4P5 2008 IMG 1821 CopyFloop 9 2022 Plate Arocha Schraenen 117

Memory 2 2013 2845 2Untitled (Dancefloor) 2017 Plate DSCF1643

Memory 1 2013 Plate 2891Box 2003 Plate Arocha 70

Some images to illustrate the book - download here